Seven Days, Seven Covers Challenge

It's March! Time for Seven Days, Seven Covers!

The rules for anyone who wants to play along [you can play for as many days as you want and/or are able to]:

1. A physical book you own. [No e-books, no library books, stolen books are OK if you never plan to return them :)]
2. Photo posted without caption or explanation [but you can chat about it to your heart's delight in the comments]
3. Interesting covers preferred. [Or interesting stains on covers 'cause that's the kind of weirdo I am!]

Day 1 will be Tomorrow! [5 Mar]

Collage Friday

Showing off more new stuff. I like the inks. The top one is called Fired Brick and the bottom is called Vintage Photo. The washi tapes on left and right sides (vertical) are new, and the stickers and such are part of the nature pack. All good stuff!

Into the Void: Vegas!

The nutshell is I'm going to Las Vegas next month to see BTS in concert.

OMG! What am I doing!?

It was a difficult choice for me. I have only been a fan for about 7 months. Am I too old for this? It's a boy band. I wasn't a fan of boy bands even when I was a teenager. I like music, but I am not a pop music fan.

But there's something about these boys! [big thank to fellow ARMY bethctg for the last minute encouragement]

It is a lot of money [ticket, hotel, airfare, really the fees are what makes things expensive, all around, if it weren't for fees things would be more reasonable].

The process wasn't easy. I had to register as an official BTS fan (ARMY), then sign up for the pre-sale, then sign up at Ticketmaster, then join the waiting room and at 6 pm PT on Wednesday and was transferred to the queue (985 people ahead of me), then pick a seat. The seats for all 4 shows sold out in 5 hours. The stadium seats 65,000 (I think).

I haven't been to a live concert in 31 years.

I haven't been on an airplane or spent the night away from my kids in 6 years.

I am terrified, but I am going to (try to) do it.

The thing that pushed me over was I realized [while walking to pick up the boys at the bus stop on Tuesday] in May, I am going to be 47 years old. When my mother was 47, she got sick, went into a vegetative state after about a month, and died 5 months later. [Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease aka Mad Cow disease].

No one really knows how much time they have, so why not?

Now I am afraid I am too fat for the airplane, so I am going to try to lose some weight.

And practice my Korean!

I don't know why I like them so much, but I do.

Book Bingo 2022: March

Translated Book: Moonlight Rests on my Left Palm: Poems and Essays by Yu Xiahua, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. I enjoyed this, and I'm very sorry I spilled coffee all over it. Yu Xiahua is a Chinese poet with cerebral palsy. Her verse and essay are about rural life, her unhappy marriage, lovers and longing, changes in her village, the meaning of certain words and ideas. I collected 3 poems to post for April (National Poetry Month). But from the essays I especially like: The essence of poetry is its inward travel. [Gift, part 4] and I favor dusk, as if I were just as gentle and cool. Perhaps I should be embarrassed, describing myself as gentle, but I can't find a better and more calming word. We have manhandled so many words thatI only dream of using them anew...Here is an ambiguous boundary: barely a moment ago, a strand of twilight sparkled through a popular, emanating an exquisite voice between its body and leaves. Night falls the next moment: I feel its gentleness as wind blows through the window. A windy hour is to me a gentle one. [Dusk on my brow, Part 1]

More than 300 pages: Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night by Julian Sancton. I read the Large Print version but I checked and the pages in the regular version are still more than 300. I liked this a lot. It has some slow spots (the beginning, when it gets into the engineering details of the ice) but all in all, a good read about an 1897 expedition to the South Pole.

Some interesting/horrifying parts that I photocopied for fodder for some poetry:

they fish for albatrosses out of the air (ignoring the warning of Coleridge's ancient mariner) and albatross bones make good pipes (not certain if this is smoking or flutes but interesting)

the concept of dead reckoning (I love that phrase) where you are estimating a ship's coordinates and bearings based on compass readings, local magnetic variation, and approximate speed since last known position

Fata Morgana, a mirage on the ice created by refraction, 'city by the sea & lighthouse'

scurvy, specifically that cannibalism won't help scurvy because humans don't have vitamin C in their flesh, but eating penguin, the rawer the better, would help

( full list )